Plan to track all foreigners - NOT JUST TOURISTS - by SIM cards moves forward

[majhiggins]

I'm surprised they've never started charging us a fee to process our 90-day checkins!

[Loles]

5555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555

[animatic]

Besides the guilty till proven innocent
and invasion of privacy issues,
which are not inconsequential.

This will only track the honest people. Which is of no use at all for those imagining this will combat crime and over stayers.

Because the bad ones will just pay a thai enough to use their sim while doing the bad things. And then say their phone was just lost or stolen if caught.

The data basing cost also will be prohibitive. And the howls of protest by bigwig foreigners and foriegn investors will be LOUD and constant.

Expect some form of walk back on this BAD idea soon.

[JESSVANPELT]

if it eliminates all the forms at immigration I'am all for it, Only those who have something to hide will worry about this one.

[dcsw53]

Didn't these so-called experts know that many tourists from Europe ( don't know about USA and Oz ) have contracted cell phones that only work with supplied SIM cards.

 

Getting one at the airport is not an option so this will not be a great advert for the high end farnangs they drone on about attracting.

[BuckBee]

Seems a load of poor information, I work in Malaysia at times & see no special tracking requirements or sims.

If was to be tracked standard sim is all that needed & can be achieved already to some extent if check recorded records on what cell towers you been connected to as all sims are registered to someone under current new laws :-/

Funny how this was overlooked in the Koh Tao case :-/

Seems to me like usual case of officials blabbing on stuff they have no technical idea of & spent 10 minutes dreaming it up with no research done and no logic applied !

[Gweiloman]

5 minutes ago, JESSVANPELT said:

if it eliminates all the forms at immigration I'am all for it, Only those who have something to hide will worry about this one.

 

It's not a matter of having anything to hide or not. Very simply, it's impossible to implement but highly important govt officials spent time discussing it and agreeing to implement it.

 

No wonder the real important issues (such as road safety etc) do not get addressed.

[Thomas33399]

These sim cards will also be capable of tracking whether you drink beer on an election or other voting day such as last Sunday when it was illegal to drink beer or other alcohol even in your own home. This country really has lost the plot. They have decided that the government, if one can call it that as it is really a military dictatorship, can overrule people's rights with impunity.

[animatic]

Just put your phone on airplane mode and use free wifi and call your friends on Line,Viber or what's app . If you want to make a call just turn of the airplane mode. I feel sorry for the paranoid people out there , They are coming to get you. 

Just because you are paranoid,
doesn't mean they are not out to get you.

[Merylhighground]

2 minutes ago, tropo said:

Don't forget that it is assumed that an expat needs to spend 65K minimum per month or 800K per year, which is less than I spend. The average tourist doesn't stay here for a month, but I reckon I spend at least as much as they do. I'm guessing the average tourist in Thailand is a budget traveller.

 

That's as maybe but then maybe you are one of the few of us 'true expats' in the sense that we are on an international salary and all the trimmings so to spend more than the average tourist, especially with housing allowances, school fees etc isn't that difficult especially when it's all laid on. I think the previous poster was referring to those 'expats' scraping by on an ever dwindling pension and ever reducing TEFL salaries...

I hope this doesn't degenenerate into another knob-waving 'this is how much I spend a month' thread....

[animatic]

Just put your phone on airplane mode and use free wifi and call your friends on Line,Viber or what's app . If you want to make a call just turn of the airplane mode. I feel sorry for the paranoid people out there , They are coming to get you. 

Just because you are paranoid,
doesn't mean they are not out to get you.

[Felt 35]

Privacy is a qualified, fundamental human right. The right to privacy is articulated in all of the major international and regional human rights instruments, including:

United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948, Article 12: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 1966, Article 17: “1. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour or reputation. 2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”

 

If the country push through with more and more "foreign" unfriendly policies it will sooner or later backfire on a big scale.

 

 

[Generalchaos]

4 hours ago, IMA_FARANG said:

So what happens if you DON"T have a SIM card and don't use a cellphone?

Exactly, never use a handphone, don't want one.

It is a bit of a drawback at times, take for example TOT, if you have a landline they want a mobile number to contact you on if you ring their 1171 helpline.

 

If you make a driving licence application at the Land Transport offices they want a mobile number to issue you with your licence - Embarrassingly for them, their computer system cannot enter a landline number! Crazy!

[raybal5]

Hello Thai authorities.  If you want to reduce crime in your country, you need to track Thai people.  What was that? You do already?  Thanks for that!

[tomacht8]

13 minutes ago, JESSVANPELT said:

if it eliminates all the forms at immigration I'am all for it, Only those who have something to hide will worry about this one.

The point is not that one has something to hide.
Thereby to prevent or solve the alleged purpose of crime is a false front.
Here it's all about, to pull additionally more money out of the tourists and foreigners.
In the end, more bureaucracy and unnecessary legwork for 30 million people each year
And not to mention the possible misuse of personal data.
Even the Banks here are not able to hedge their ATMs reasonable against abuse.

[JESSVANPELT]

10 minutes ago, Gweiloman said:

 

It's not a matter of having anything to hide or not. Very simply, it's impossible to implement but highly important govt officials spent time discussing it and agreeing to implement it.

 

No wonder the real important issues (such as road safety etc) do not get addressed.

implementation is easier then you think

[nabbie]

Are they trying to close the tourism down by special SIM card?

[Naam]

4 hours ago, oilinki said:

I'm quite curious about the technical solution. Why a special SIM card is needed or is it just a way to say, that these numbers will be actively triangulated without a warrant?

 

AFAIK there are no GPS enabled SIM cards yet. 

 

One possibility could be that these SIM are using specific APN for 'free' channel to broadcast phone's GPS information to the government and it would be mandatory for foreigners to have GPS enabled on their phones?

 

 

 

 

 

the most likely possibility is that these news belong to the usual büllshyte that is fed to the public 

[Gweiloman]

8 minutes ago, JESSVANPELT said:

implementation is easier then you think

 

Really? Did you read the OP?

 

" Foreign tourists would be able to continue to use SIM cards brought in from other countries under roaming service and would not be required to turn their location on. They would only receive a location-tracking SIM card once they showed their passport to purchase one from a Thai service provider. "

 

How would you compel a tourist to go and purchase a SIM card?

 

[fullcave]

 

Spoiler

 

 

[vukovar77]

It is OK to track us.I do not need to hide anything!!!

Anyway,satellite can do it for a long time already!!!

[Bangkok Barry]

How do you force a visitor to buy a Sim card they don't want? Refuse entry to the country?

 

[55Jay]

Every time a train runs over a car on the tracks, the PM orders a nationwide fix of all train crossings.  It's been ordered so many times, I think even he's lost track of who's been ordered to do what.  Last time, he ordered the Ministry of Health to fix the problem. 

 

So, I wouldn't fret too much about this. 

[soc]

4 hours ago, seajae said:

now this is starting to get creepy,  tracking all non thais in Thailand through their phone is a joke, I rarely even turn mine on unless I want to use it. Have to wonder which idiot has suggested this, first they want us to fill in forms to tell them all our personal details and now this, have to think it is a certain thai that simply doesnt like farangs and wants them all gone, really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this sort of crap.

l think that they can track you even with the phone switched off.

There was a case in Australia where the cops tracked people delivering large amounts of marijuana  & they had their phones switched off.

[dcnx]

My DTAC and True SIM cards are registered with my passport. That's all they are getting from me. Any new, mandatory sim cards will be bought through a Thai, on principle only, just so I don't participate in their ludicrous program.

 

Fight the power!!!!  :-)

[soc]

4 hours ago, seajae said:

now this is starting to get creepy,  tracking all non thais in Thailand through their phone is a joke, I rarely even turn mine on unless I want to use it. Have to wonder which idiot has suggested this, first they want us to fill in forms to tell them all our personal details and now this, have to think it is a certain thai that simply doesnt like farangs and wants them all gone, really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this sort of crap.

l think that they can track you even with the phone switched off.

There was a case in Australia where the cops tracked people delivering large amounts of marijuana  & they had their phones switched off.

[soc]

4 hours ago, seajae said:

now this is starting to get creepy,  tracking all non thais in Thailand through their phone is a joke, I rarely even turn mine on unless I want to use it. Have to wonder which idiot has suggested this, first they want us to fill in forms to tell them all our personal details and now this, have to think it is a certain thai that simply doesnt like farangs and wants them all gone, really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this sort of crap.

l think that they can track you even with the phone switched off.

There was a case in Australia where the cops tracked people delivering large amounts of marijuana  & they had their phones switched off.

[bbbbooboo]

I suspect the location of many rubbish bins in Thailand are going to be over-identified. God forbid ,its almost like they don't want us here innit?

[JESSVANPELT]

11 minutes ago, Gweiloman said:

 

Really? Did you read the OP?

 

" Foreign tourists would be able to continue to use SIM cards brought in from other countries under roaming service and would not be required to turn their location on. They would only receive a location-tracking SIM card once they showed their passport to purchase one from a Thai service provider. "

 

How would you compel a tourist to go and purchase a SIM card?

 

Roaming rates are very very expensive, so most people who stay here would convert, its not a big deal to do, unless you want to think it is?

[Dario]

2 hours ago, BOBAKAT said:

Useless !

 

you are already tracked  even your phone is off.

For months, with the new simcard registration system, they know exactly where you are all the time.  

Maybe someone have to sell smart simcard, the same as the explosives detectors...?

 

I doubt it. If your claim was correct there would be no need for the new sim cards.